Overclockers Forum Software Highlights

These software applications are homemade projects born of the sweat and keyboard strokes of their creators, and we are proud their developers call Overclockers.com home! Some of these are overclocking related, while some serve other interests of the community… All of them are great examples of exceptional software that our members produce!

Core Temp monitors processor temps, every overclocker needs it! It supports logging, and is updated regularly to keep up with the latest processor releases and resolve bugs quickly. Other than the main app, it also works with various add-ons, like the Core Temp Gadget for the Windows sidebar. It is the only software temperature monitoring application I ever use! The author describes it as follows:

Core Temp is a compact, no fuss, small footprint program to monitor CPU temperature.

Real Temp monitors Intel processor temps, so you may want to compare it to Core Temp and see which you like best if you run an Intel system. It supports manual calibration and reports distance to tjMax. It is updated regularly, and supports the latest processors. Unclewebb can also be found on Xtremesystems.org, which appears to be his primary forum hangout. The author says the following about his app:

RealTemp is a temperature monitoring program designed for all Intel single Core, dual Core and quad Core processors. Each core on these processors has a digital thermal sensor (DTS) that reports temperature data relative to TjMax which is the safe maximum operating core temperature for the CPU. As your CPU heats up, your Distance to TjMax will decrease. If it reaches zero your processor will start to throttle or slow down so obviously maximizing your distance away from TjMax will help your computer to run at full speed and more reliably too.

Core Damage is a great compliment to Core Temp/Real Temp if you want to see just how hard you can push your cooling setup. It doesn’t test stability as quickly as Prime95 can, but it will get your processor about as hot as it can get. Just keep in mind, you will likely never see temps this high under any regular load on your computer – all 100% loads are not always equal. Make sure your cooling is up to snuff! In the authors words:

Core Damage is a powerful CPU stress tester that executes instructions at the maximum possible rate to reduce idling and increase heat output. This is the fastest and most effective way to check the cooling system and determine stability of an overclocked CPU under stressful conditions.

Open Hardware Monitor reports system temperatures, voltages, fan speeds, load, and clock speeds. It can even read graphics cards and storage temps! The real special part of Open Hardware Monitor is that it is open source, something not often found in monitoring applications! mmoeller is also a member at hardocp.com. The author has the following to say for his app:

The Open Hardware Monitor supports most hardware monitoring chips found on today’s mainboards. The CPU temperature can be monitored by reading the core temperature sensors of Intel and AMD processors. The sensors of ATI and Nvidia video cards as well as SMART hard drive temperature can be displayed. The monitored values can be displayed in the main window, in a customizable desktop gadget, or in the system tray. The Open Hardware Monitor runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7 and any x86 based Linux operating systems without installation.

HFM.NET is a Folding@Home client monitoring application. Many Folding@Home Distributed Computing project participants run multiple rigs to crunch the most units possible, and HFM.NET allows them to monitor all their rigs in one place! It is very popular in our own Folding@Home Team forum. By the authors own description:

HFM.NET is an open source (GPLv2) application that monitors and tracks the progress of Folding@Home clients. Based on the Microsoft .NET (v3.5) Framework, HFM.NET runs in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode on Windows XP, Vista, & Windows 7. HFM.NET is also compatible with the Mono Framework version 2.4 or higher, which enables HFM.NET to also run on compatible Linux distributions.

EasyBMP may not be for “hard core” overclocking, but its written by one of the more “hard core” members of Overclockers.com. Paul Macklin has been a moderator for OC Forums in his spare time, but in his professional life he is a well published PH.D. mathematics lecturer specialized in Computational Oncology. I’m not even qualified to explain exactly what that means, but essentially, Paul knows a great deal about biology, medicine, computer science, and how that all relates to modeling cancer.

So what is EasyBMP? It’s a cross platform software library, and it enables programmers to easily bring graphics data into and out of their application. In Paul’s own words:

EasyBMP is a simple, cross-platform, open source (revised BSD) C++ library designed for easily reading, writing, and modifying Windows bitmap (BMP) image files … The library is oriented towards the novice programmer with little formal experience, but it is sufficiently capable for anybody who desires to do I/O and pixel operations on uncompressed 1, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32 bpp (bits per pixel) BMP files.

Overclockix is a live linux distribution created by and customized for Overclockers.com members. It is downloaded, burnt to a CD, and runs your computer directly from the CD without making any permanent changes to your system. It began life in 2003 as a remastered version of Knoppix brought to life by senior forum member Arkaine23. Today, it’s been “revived” by forum moderator mbentley and is built from a Debian base. Through its death and rebirth, its focus has remained on stress testing, distributed computing, and as an overall linux toolkit. You can follow its latest progress and download a burnable ISO to try it for yourself in the latest Overclockix thread.

Thank You!

All of these members have taken their time to give back to the Overclockers community not just in their forum presence, but also in the form of this great software. If you’ve used any of the packages above, reply in the comments below to say thanks!

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